1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic package.
2. Description of Related Art
Integrated circuits (ICs) are typically housed within a package that can be mounted to a printed circuit board. A conventional IC package includes an outer housing that encapsulates the integrated circuit and a lead frame that couples the circuit to the printed circuit board. The outer housing is typically constructed from a dielectric material such as a glass filled epoxy. Glass filled epoxies have a relatively low coefficient of thermal conductivity. Consequentially, a substantial portion of the heat generated by the integrated circuit is transferred to the printed circuit board through the lead frame. The leads of the lead frame are relatively long and create a thermal resistance that may cause excessive junction temperatures in the IC. High junction temperatures may damage or otherwise effect the performance of the circuit.
Conventional electronic packages are typically constructed with a predetermined number of leads (pins). For example, electronic packages commonly referred to as quad flat packs (QFP) may be constructed to have 100 or 120 pins. The power, ground and input/output (I/O) of the integrated circuit are dedicated to specific pins of the package. For a 100 pin package, 64 pins may be dedicated to I/O, 18 pins may be dedicated to power and 18 pins may be dedicated to ground. High density integrated circuits such as a microprocessor require a relatively large amount of power. High power IC's require a large number of power and ground to decrease the overall electrical and thermal resistance of the leads. Dedicating additional leads to power and ground reduces the number of I/O pins for the package. It would be desirable to provide an electronic package for an I/C that has relatively high thermal and electrical requirements without decreasing the I/O throughput of the package. It would also be desirable to provide an efficient electronic package that was simple to assemble and inexpensive to produce.